


Ghosts of War

by DKNC



Series: War's Echoes Never Truly Cease [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/pseuds/DKNC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ghosts can't touch you," she had told him. But Ned Stark feared she was wrong about that after all. This is a story of loss and love set during World War II.</p>
<p>Written for the "War" prompt in the Game of Ships Golden Ships challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of War

_October, 1947_

Ned Stark’s hands shook violently as he read the letter by the light of the little lamp on the kitchen table. He had no idea what time it was--very late or very early, depending upon one’s perspective. His almost two year old son had been fretful that evening, perhaps picking up on his father’s tension. Ned had been on edge since Catelyn had handed him the letter at dinner.

“This came for you today. It looks like it’s from France.”

There was no real return address and he had never seen the handwriting before, but as soon as he saw the word Saint-Lo scrawled in the upper left corner, he knew he could not read it with his wife looking on. He’d tossed it aside and said it could wait because he was hungry and her food smelled so good.

When he did not reach for it after dinner, she asked no questions. She had seen him through nightmares and silent withdrawn days since his return over a year ago, and she knew there were some things he would talk about and others he would not. And he would speak about nothing until he was ready. She understood these things and never pushed him, even though he knew at times it killed her. God, he loved her.

They’d spent a largely silent evening until Robb began to howl as the sun went down, and then they had taken it in turn to try to soothe him. Ned had walked him around for what seemed like hours. He was a good sized toddler, and while Catelyn never complained, he knew her back ached from lifting the child all day, especially now that she was just over halfway through her pregnancy with their second child. Finally, the boy had fallen asleep, and after Cat had tucked him into his crib, Ned had kissed his exhausted wife and sent her to bed as well. “I’ll be along in awhile,” he’d told her.

She’d looked at him a moment and then nodded. “I love you,” she said simply, touching his face. Then, as she’d walked away from Robb’s crib to go to their bedroom, she’d turned back to him. “Wake me when you come to bed if you like.”

He’d nodded and stood there staring at his sleeping son for a long time before making his way back down to the kitchen.

Now, he’d read the letter three times. Re-reading it didn’t change the content, though, and his hands shook because he feared the content would take from him everything he held most dear. Catelyn. Robb. The new baby they’d made after he’d returned from hell. He’d often feared in the dark of the night that the joy he had found with Cat was wrong. Perhaps this was his punishment for taking a love not meant to be his. He put his head in his hands and his mind drifted back. Back to when Catelyn did not belong to him.

 

_November, 1941-October, 1942_

“He says it’s absolute paradise,” Catelyn Tully gushed. “Honestly, guys, if half of what he says about Hawaii is true, I’ll never want to leave!”

Ned smiled at his older brother’s pretty fiancee. “Did you ever think maybe he’s exaggerating? Just trying to get you to come out there more quickly?” he asked her. He was a fairly serious young man and not given to teasing as a rule, but Catelyn had a way of making people want to smile and laugh, even him.

“Oh, he doesn’t have to try to do that,” she said now. “He knows how badly I want to be with him.” She blushed then and looked down at her plate.

Thanksgiving had promised to be a rather somber affair at the Stark household with Brandon stationed in Pearl Harbor and Lyanna gone to spend the holiday at a friend’s, but then had come Catelyn’s surprise request to join Ned, his father, and his youngest brother Ben for dinner rather than spending it with her own family. Once there, she had shared with them Brandon’s latest letter in which he had asked her if she would consider coming out to Honolulu and getting married there instead of waiting for him to finish his tour. She was all for the idea, but had wanted to be sure the Starks didn’t feel cheated out of a wedding.

Of course, neither Rickard Stark nor his two sons were fussed at all by the idea of not having to endure a wedding, and since Lyanna wasn’t there to give an opinion, the dinner had rapidly become a very festive affair as Catelyn’s excitement at being married within the next couple months was infectious.

“Are you sure your father is all right with this?” Rickard Stark asked her for the fourth time.

“Yes, Mr. Stark.” She smiled. “I won’t lie. He didn’t like the idea at all at first. But he knows how miserable I’ve been without Brandon, and I promised I’d come back and stay here with them any time Brandon’s ship is out on long tours. And I promised not to go until after Christmas.”

“What did Lysa say?” Ben asked her. “All she talked about the last time you had her over here was bridesmaid’s dresses.” He rolled his eyes.

“Well, she isn’t very happy about it,” Catelyn said honestly. “And I am sorry to disappoint her, but it is my life, after all. And I’m more than ready to start that life with Brandon.”

She positively glowed that day. They were all so young then, sitting around that table teasing her about becoming a hula girl and laughing at Ben’s jokes about Brandon’s ship. Apparently his seventh grade class was studying U.S. geography, and he found it hilarious that his oldest brother served on a battleship named for a landlocked state with more desert than water.

Of course, less than a month later, everyone in the country knew the name of that ship. Ned had been back at college, finishing up courses before the Christmas break and hadn’t come home the first weekend in December as he had a mountain of work to do. On Sunday afternoon, he was sitting in the large common room of his dormitory checking footnotes on a paper, more or less ignoring the radio that was playing until the special bulletin broke in. An attack on Pearl Harbor. War. Attack in progress. War. Pearl Harbor. _Brandon._ He barely heard the man’s words. His mind kept screaming, _Brandon._

He had driven home in a state of near panic, part of him wishing to still be by the radio in the common room, desperate for any news, but the larger part of him needing to be with his family. Hoster Tully’s car was parked in front of the house when he arrived, and when he walked in he saw Cat and her father sitting in the living room with his own father and siblings. Catelyn looked up as he entered and threw herself at him, putting her arms around his neck and crying, “Oh, Ned, he’ll be all right! He has to be all right!”

He wanted to believe her. He tried to make himself believe her, even as reports came in over the next few days of the sinking of the Arizona with virtually all her men. He didn’t give up hope until the two uniformed men knocked on their front door.

Catelyn wasn’t with them then. Her father had insisted she needed to spend some time in her own home with her own family rather than spending every minute at the Stark home awaiting news. Ned stood beside his father as one of the men handed him a letter and offered his gratitude for his son’s service and sacrifice. Rickard Stark’s face looked as if it were carved of ice and he spoke barely a dozen words while the men were there. When they had gone, he collapsed to the ground with the letter still in his hand.

She came to the hospital. Ned didn’t know who had called her. His mind had been taken up by his father. _His heart,_ the doctor said. He was alive, but barely. When Catelyn came to Ned in the waiting room, her first words were for Rickard Stark. “Is he all right?"

“No. But he is alive.”

She swallowed. “I will pray for him,” she said, laying a hand on Ned’s arm.

Ned said nothing.

“Ned . . .” she said then, looking up at him with terrified blue eyes. “Brandon . . .is it true?”

He didn’t want to say it out loud. He hadn’t had to say it out loud yet. He took both her hands in his and made himself look into those eyes. “He’s gone, Cat. I’m sorry.”

The sob which escaped her then was a sound of pure anguish, and she started to sink to the floor. Ned let go of her hands and put his arms around her, holding her up while she cried into his chest. He didn’t know how long they stood there like that before the doctor came out and told him that he could see his father now, reassuring Catelyn that Rickard had an excellent chance of surviving because the idiot man didn’t know the reason for her tears.

Rickard Stark did survive, but he wasn’t able to leave the hospital for more than a month, and the life seemed to have gone from him. Ned didn’t return to school because he had Lyanna and Benjen to take care of now. He watched his friends enlist and vow to exact vengeance on the Japs, but he couldn’t abandon his younger siblings to go to war any more than he could abandon them to return to school. So, he found work and tried to keep them all fed and clothed. His father was reasonably well off financially, but the hospital bills added up.

Catelyn Tully continued to spend at least a part of almost every day with him, and Ned began to look forward to his time with her. She needed to talk about Brandon with someone who knew him and loved him, and Ned needed to be silent, to not be required to speak at all. Each willingly gave the other what they needed, and their friendship grew deeper over the months that followed. By summer, Ned knew that he loved her just as surely as he knew that she still loved his dead brother.

They held a service for Brandon in May when Rickard was finally strong enough to attend. There was no body, of course. Ned’s brother lay in the Pacific with his shipmates. Ned spoke briefly at the service and then sat down between his father and Cat. His father was a cold, distant shadow of the man he once was, but Cat took Ned’s hand and squeezed it tightly, sitting up straight in the pew, not hiding her grief, but not allowing it to overwhelm her either. Ned wasn’t sure which of them got the other through that day. He thought perhaps neither of them would have made it without the other.

After the service, she didn’t come around as much, and Ned missed her. She still stopped by at least a couple times a week, but her father was encouraging her to separate herself from the Starks in order to put Brandon behind her and move on with her life. She told Ned she didn’t know if she could ever really do that. Then she smiled at him and told him that she didn’t want to cut him out of her life either.

He assured her she’d never have to do that and resisted the impulse to reach out and touch her beautiful copper hair. _She is still Brandon’s. She cannot be mine._

Then came the day in late September when his father didn’t answer Ned’s knock on his bedroom door. He often slept late and required assistance in rising. He’d survived the heart attack, but had never actually been well again. When no response came to a second knock, Ned had opened the door and gone in. Rickard Stark lay still and pale in the bed, having died some time in the night.

He didn’t cry. He forced his grief down inside and tried to freeze it solid. He tried to break the news gently to Lyanna who howled like an angry, wounded animal and Ben, who simply cried silently, his face looking simultaneously younger and older than his thirteen years. Then he called Catelyn. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

He called about making arrangements for his father’s body, called work to tell them he wouldn’t be coming in, and then called the very kind lady next door and asked her to come over and feed something to Lyanna and Ben. He couldn’t eat. He could scarcely breathe. When the neighbor arrived, he walked out of the house to the old shed at the back of their property that he and Brandon had turned into a private clubhouse years before and that Lyanna and then Benjen had played in over the years as well. He sat down on the ancient sofa against the back wall, put his head in his hands and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.

After a bit, he heard a soft voice. “Ned?”

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway, blue eyes full of concern as she looked at him. “I can’t do it, Cat,” he said desolately. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do, but whatever it is, I don’t think I can do it.”

She closed the door behind her and came to sit beside him on the sofa. “Yes, you can,” she said, taking his hands in hers. “You are the strongest person I know, Eddard Stark. Whatever has to be done, you can do it.”

Ned laughed at that. “No. You’re the strong one, Cat. I’m just . . .trying to stay afloat.”

“That takes a lot of strength,” she said. “As for me, I would never have survived without you, Ned.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Will you still try to go back to school in January?” she asked him. “It’ll be a year and . . .”

“How am I supposed to do that?” he interrupted her. “Lya’s only seventeen and Ben’s thirteen. It was always just a fantasy, hoping that Dad would be better, be well enough to be their father again by January, and now that fantasy is over.” He sounded bitter.

She swallowed. “We’ll figure it out. You can’t just give up on college, Ned. It’s what you want . . .”

“No!” he shouted at her then, and she jumped a little. “I don’t want to go school, Cat! I want to go fight the goddamn sons of bitches who killed my brother and who have now killed my father as well! I can’t stand watching other men go while I stay here and play nanny, but I’m stuck, Cat! They’re kids! I can’t leave them and go to war.”

“Oh, Ned,” she said, throwing her arms around him.

He felt the ice he’d encased himself in start to melt at her touch. He tried to keep the grief frozen but found he couldn’t do it. “He’s dead, Cat. My father is dead.” He realized he was crying. “I’m not Brandon. I’m not Dad. I don’t know what to do.”

She held him while he cried, saying, “Shh, Ned, I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”

Then she was kissing him, her lips soft and warm against his, gentle at first, but then hungrily, her arms pulling him more tightly against her. He kissed her back desperately, wanting and needing her more than he’d ever wanted or needed anything in his life. Neither of them hesitated. He felt her hands slide under his shirt, her long fingers moving over his skin and setting him on fire. He reached to lift her own shirt then, and she raised her arms to allow him to pull it over her head.

He stopped momentarily, breathing hard as he watched her breasts in her beige bra rise and fall in time with her own labored breathing. “Yes,” she whispered, reaching to unclasp that bra with one hand and using her other to place his hand on her now naked breast. They both gasped at the contact, and he felt his cock stiffen painfully in his pants.

“Cat . . .Catelyn . . .I . . .”

She stopped him by pressing her lips to his again, and he grabbed at his own shirt then, breaking the contact between them only long enough to pull it over his head, wanting to feel her flesh pressed against him. As their lips met again, and he felt her tongue slide against his, he actually moaned, pressing his erection against her. She broke the kiss then and looked at him with wide eyes, and he thought she would tell him to stop.

Instead, she reached for the fly of his pants and began trying to get it open. “Cat,” he said, wondering how much further he could go and still be able to stop.

“Yes,” she said again. “Please, Ned.”

She pulled his hands to his fly then, apparently having given up on managing it herself, but then pulled her own skirt and panties off with one smooth motion. The sight of her naked there beside him almost caused him to lose it before he could get his pants off. He managed it somehow, though, and laid her back on the sofa, lowering himself onto her. As his cock came into contact with the tender flesh around her opening, she gasped, and he stopped.

She took him in her hand then which made him gasp and guided the tip of his cock inside her. She was trembling but she met his eyes and nodded. He kissed her face and neck and pushed himself the rest of the way in. She made a soft cry of pain, and he started to pull away, but she put her hands on his hips, holding him in place. Then she began to move slowly beneath him. At that, he lost all semblance of control and began moving within her, slowly at first and then faster and harder until he could barely breathe. She was warm and wet and felt incredible. She made another sound and tightened around him which caused his cock to jump, and he cried out her name as he came.

He collapsed onto her then, and neither of them spoke. He had never made love to a woman before, and while he felt completely satisfied, he felt guilty as well. He should not have used her like that. He pushed himself up off her, and the guilt increased as he saw the smear of blood staining his cock and the inside of her thighs.

“Catelyn,” he said, realizing he shouldn’t have been shocked. “I’m . . .I’m sorry.” _Cat’s a good girl,_ he recalled Brandon telling him on more than one occasion when he’d berated his brother about the girls he dated on the side. _A man has his needs, little_ _bro. It’ll be different when we’re married. She’ll take care of me then, and I won’t ever need anyone else._

“Don’t be,” she said softly. “It was my choice.” She sat up and reached toward the floor for her panties. Ned bent and handed them to her. “I always told Brandon no,” she said then. “And now I’ll never . . .” She looked at Ned. “I don’t want to have that regret again.”

_Did she make love to me for Brandon‘s sake?_ Ned wondered, confused by her words.

They both dressed and went back to the house without saying much more. Throughout the next few weeks, she was at the house every day, helping with the funeral arrangements, cooking for Ned, Lyanna, and Ben, and generally helping Ned take care of the younger two and getting them back into school and their daily routine. They essentially worked together to keep Ned’s family from falling apart.

They also continued to make love. Whenever they had the house to themselves, they’d reach for each other. After the second time it happened, Ned had realized they weren’t likely to stop and had rummaged through Brandon’s old room for his stash of condoms. He never told Catelyn where he got them and hoped that the two times they had done it without one had not resulted in getting her pregnant.

They talked easily with each other about almost everything with two exceptions. They never discussed what they felt about each other, and they no longer ever spoke about Brandon. Finally, Ned couldn’t continue living that way anymore.

“What are we doing?” he asked her as they lay tangled together in his bed. He’d come home from work for lunch while Lya and Ben were at school to find her there doing their laundry.

“Taking care of each other,” she replied after a moment. “We’re good at taking care of each other, Ned.”

He sat up then and looked down at her. “No,” he said. “This feels like using each other to me, and I don’t want that.”

She sat up then, too, and tears started to fill her eyes. “I would never want that,” she said.

He nodded. “So, marry me, Cat.”

For once, he actually made her speechless.

“Marry me,” he repeated. “I know you are not in love with me. You may never love anyone the way you loved Brandon. But you care for me. We are good together. I like taking care of you, Cat. Let me do it for real. Let me do it the right way.” _And I love you._

She looked at him for a long moment, and then she nodded. “Okay,” she said. She kissed him then, a long, tender kiss that spoke more of caring than of lust. “I do care for you, Ned. It’s just . . .”

He kissed her again. “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he told her softly, as he pulled his lips away. _I already know. And forgive me, Brandon, but I don’t want to hear your name from her lips more often than I have to._

He grinned at her. “So when shall we do this?”

 

_October, 1947_

Lost in the memory of the day Catelyn agreed to become his wife, Ned had almost forgotten the letter in his hand. Startled, he realized that today’s date was October 20. In four days, they would be married five years. On October 24, 1942, he and Catelyn had said their vows in the parlor of her father’s house before a justice of the peace who was a good friend of Hoster Tully’s. Only Cat’s father, Ned’s brother and sister, and Catelyn’s brother and sister had been in attendance. Ned could have cared less who was there as long he was with Catelyn.

That day had begun several months of relative contentment in Ned’s life. He could never forget the war. It permeated daily life. He could never forget his father or his brother. Yet Lyanna and Ben had settled back into their lives reasonably well, and Ned and Catelyn had found much joy in each other. Looking back now, Ned realized they had already loved each other deeply, but both had been too unsure of the other’s feelings to admit it openly. _God, we were stupid._ He wanted never to leave her, but the war still raged by the time Lyanna graduated from high school in the spring of 1943, and Ned’s friend, Robert Baratheon, sent him letters about great Allied victories in North Africa. Ned had felt compelled to be a part of it. He hadn’t been able to shake the guilt he felt at loving the woman meant to be Brandon’s wife while doing nothing to win the war that had claimed Brandon’s life. He set the letter down on the table and picked up the little black and white photograph which had come with it. He looked at it a long time, wondering how much easier Catelyn’s life would have been had Brandon not died. Their fifth anniversary was in four days. He wondered if she would still find reason to celebrate it.

Ned remembered well the day he told her he was going to enlist.

 

_June, 1943-May, 1944_

“It’s time, Cat. Lyanna will be going to college this fall. Ben is old enough to be a help to you here, and God knows he minds you better than he does me.”

She still sat silently.

“Cat?” he asked gently. “You know how badly I’ve wanted to do my part.”

She nodded then. “You want to follow, Brandon.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Well . . .yes . . .I feel I owe it to . . .”

“Not the navy,” she interrupted him.

“What?”

“Not the navy.”

Now, it was his turn to sit silently and wait for her to continue.

She looked away as if seeing something that he couldn’t. “I still have the nightmares sometimes. Brandon. Trapped in that ship. Under the water. Unable to breathe. Choking. Drowning.” Her voice broke. “Dying.” She had tears in her eyes when she looked back at him. “I can’t go through that again. I can’t do that with you.”

She didn’t ask him not to go to war. She did not sob or plead or remind him she had lost too much already. She only asked him not die on a ship.

So Eddard Stark joined the army.

He did his ten weeks of basic training in the summer heat and impressed his superiors enough that they approached him about attending the Officer Candidate School General Bradley had established at Ft. Benning, Georgia. It would delay his going into combat for awhile, but he felt he could do well as an officer, so after a brief furlough home, off he went to Ft. Benning.

He missed Cat and his sister and brother terribly, but Ned actually enjoyed OCS and did his best to excel. When he graduated from OCS as a second lieutenant at the end of January in 1944, he was offered several stateside appointments, but he made it clear he wanted combat. He knew well enough that with the Red Army pushing the Germans back in the east and the Allied successes in North Africa and Italy, a full scale invasion from the west had to be coming. Rumor had it that General Eisenhower had gone to England, and that’s where Ned wanted to go. Whatever was happening, that’s where it would be staged.

During the month of February, he was assigned to the Pentagon, working as an aide for an army colonel during which time he found himself inexplicably promoted to first lieutenant for what he considered glorified secretarial work. He had begun to despair of ever getting a combat assignment when the colonel called him into his office and told him to go home and see his family for a week because after that he was going to England to join a company in the First Infantry Division. Ned knew that troops from the First had been in England since November. Perhaps something was going to happen soon, and perhaps he would be a part of it.

At home with Catelyn, he found himself watching her closely, memorizing the way her hair swayed gently across her back when she walked or the way the left corner of her mouth would twitch more than the right when she was trying not to smile at something. When he held her each night, he sought to memorize her with all his senses--the sounds she made when he took her nipple into his mouth or touched her between her legs, the scent of her hair as it fell down on his face when she’d straddle him and lean forward to kiss him, the taste of her lips and tongue, and the feel of every part of her against every part of him. He’d been away for nearly six months, and God knew how long he’d be gone this next time, or if he would ever come home.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he told her as he lay on his back with her head on his chest after making love. They had only two more nights before he left.

“Well, you can ask, but I don’t think the army will let you stay with me,” she said teasingly. He could hear the strain in her voice beneath her light words, though.

“No,” he said softly. “And I do want to go, Cat. I want to fight. It isn’t just about Brandon. You know that. The things that Hitler and the Germans have been doing in Europe . ..” He paused. “I’ve heard more in the Pentagon even than you read in the papers. It’s a terrible evil that must be stopped.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Am I terrible that I still don’t want you to go?”

“No. Because as much as I want to go, I hate leaving you even more.” He shifted slightly to his side so that they were looking at each other’s faces. “You mean everything to me, Catelyn. I have never really told you that.”

“Oh, Ned,” she said, and tears filled her eyes.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I know I am not what you wanted. I know that Brandon will always have your heart and that’s . . .”

“Shut up, Eddard Stark,” she said then, putting her hand over his mouth. Tears were actually spilling from her eyes now. “I love you, you idiot. I love you. Maybe I didn’t when I married you or maybe I did and I just didn’t know it yet, but I know it now. I don’t want you to stay because Brandon died and I’m lonely. I want you to stay because I love you and it’s harder to breathe when you’re gone and the thought of you never coming home is something I can’t bear. So don’t you die, Ned. Don’t you dare die on me!”

Her voice broke completely then and she threw herself onto him, sobbing into his neck. He held her tightly and whispered “I love you,” into her ear. He’d never said that to her before, but suddenly it was extremely important to him that she know it. As for her declaration of love for him, he didn’t know whether she had somehow combined him with Brandon in her mind or whether she truly had banished Brandon’s memory from its hold on her heart. He decided he didn’t want to question it too closely.

He held her face in his and kissed her eyes and cheeks, tasting the salt of her tears. Then she began kissing him back, and they made love again. Afterward, she slept, but he stayed awake most of that night just watching her. He wished he could promise her he wouldn’t die, but he had never lied to her, and he wouldn’t start now.

They spent almost every moment together the last two days, although they were careful to include Benjen as well. Lyanna had come home from school on the weekend to spend time with Ned, but she’d had to go back already. Finally, dawn came on the morning he had to leave, and he woke to find her sitting up in bed, auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders, looking down at him as if she may never see him again. _She may not,_ he thought.

“You’re going to France, aren’t you?” she asked him.

“I’m going to England. I told you that.”

She huffed. “We aren’t fighting against England. You’re going to France. To fight the Germans.” That time it was a statement.

He sat up and took her hand. “Probably,” he said, “Although I haven’t been told anything. And if I had, I couldn’t tell you. But I am going to England first.”

“On a ship,” she said quietly. “The Germans could try to sink you.”

“They could try,” he agreed. “But troop transports travel with convoys, so they’re unlikely to succeed, Cat.” He kissed her. “I promise to send you a letter as soon as I get to England, so you know I’m off the ship.”

“You’ll just be getting on another one to cross the English Channel.”

He laughed at her then. “True. If I go to France. But if I make it all the way across the Atlantic, I don’t imagine the English Channel will do me in.”

“It isn’t funny,” she said, frowning.

“No,” he relented. “I’m sorry for teasing you, but you’re beautiful even when you’re worried, and I can’t help but want to smile at your beautiful face today, Cat.” He reached out and touched that face. “Because I imagine I might need a smile wherever I’m going, and I want to close my eyes and remember smiling at you.”

She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. “Mmm,” she said as he brought his other hand up to stroke her neck and then her breasts. “Then I suppose I should give you a smiling face to remember.” She opened her eyes and grinned at him. “But first,” she said, pushing him down on his back, and throwing one leg over him to rise up on her knees above him, “I’m going to give you something else to remember.”

When she drove him to the bus station two hours later, she didn’t cry. Ben teared up just a little in spite of working very hard at being a man, but Catelyn only smiled, kissed him, and said, “I’ll be waiting when you get home.”

He smiled back at her. “And that thought will keep me going, my love.”

She smiled more broadly when he called her that, and kissed him one last time. Then he boarded the bus and was gone from her. He hoped she got back home before she cried.

In truth, the crossing to England was uneventful. Even the weather cooperated fully, and Ned found himself meeting his new unit well before March ended. Some of the enlisted men who had been there for months were less than enthused about being saddled with a green lieutenant who’d never seen combat. Some of these men had already been in North Africa. He worked hard at earning their respect both during drills and during down time, and by the time May rolled around he began to feel like an actual member of the company. On the last day of May, a letter arrived from Catelyn. It was the latest of many. He’d taken a bit of ribbing from the guys at the frequency with which his wife wrote him. Her first letter had arrived so quickly after he did, they had teased that she must have written it the day he left. Having read it, he knew that she in fact had written it that night, writing to him all the things she hadn’t wanted to say for fear of breaking down in front of him.

There was very little teasing now, though. They all knew that all the drilling, all the training, was rapidly coming to an end. They didn’t know precisely when they’d cross the channel, but it would be soon. The men were in a far more somber mood than previously. He opened Cat’s letter prepared to savor the last words he might read from her in a very long time.

_My love,_

_I pray this letter finds you safely still in England for I want you to know this news before you must put yourself in harm’s way. I didn’t want to write you until I could be sure, but I am sure now. You are going to be a father, Ned. It would seem you didn’t leave me alone after all, but left me with part of yourself._

Ned’s hands began to shake and his heart sped up. _A father?_ He and Cat had made a baby. He supposed he shouldn’t be shocked, but then they hadn’t used any condoms since their wedding, and it had never happened before. _A baby._ He felt inexplicably happy and miserable at the same time. He should be with her. He shouldn’t be halfway around the world possibly preparing to go to his death. He didn’t want his child to grow up fatherless. But, oh god, how he did want this child.

He read the rest of Cat’s letter. Benjen and Lya were well. She promised to take care of herself as well as them. She loved and missed him, but she was doing all right. The rationing wasn’t too bad at home and the weather was finally warming up. Then just before she closed, she wrote:

_I lie in my bed at night and place my hand over our baby, and as odd as it sounds, I feel as though I am holding you, too. I feel closer to you because your baby is with me, in me, because we made this little person. I cannot imagine sharing this with anyone else. Please stay safe, my darling. Do all that you can to come home to us because now we are both waiting for you._

_All my love,_

_Catelyn_

Five nights later, he was on the transport ship.

 

_October, 1947_

He still had that letter. He had left it in England for safekeeping when he’d crossed the channel. He’d wanted to keep it with him, and yet he had a greater need to keep it safe, as if he were keeping his wife and child safe by extension. His world had changed with that letter. _A father._ He thought of the auburn haired, blue eyed boy who laughed easily and who’d been such a trial tonight. Sometimes, he thought his heart would burst just from looking at him. He’d been been six months old the first time Ned saw him, and the minute he’d laid eyes on him in Catelyn’s arms, Ned had known he would never be the same. He’d die or kill for him without a second thought. He thought of the new baby, the one still resting safely inside his sleeping wife’s body. Only a little over a week ago, Catelyn had placed his hand on the little mound of her belly and showed him how to feel the kicking inside her. It was extraordinary. Everything about his wife carrying his child was extraordinary and all the more precious to him for having missed it with Robb.

He looked at the letter on the table in front of him now and felt sick. This letter would change his world as well, but he didn’t want this change. He wanted to hold onto the world he’d had before he’d opened it. He looked at the little photograph still in his hands and wanted to weep as he recalled the words Cat had written in 1944. “Oh god, Cat,” he said out loud. “What have I done to you? What have I done to us?”

The photograph fell from his fingers and he buried his face in his hands, allowing himself to remember what he’d buried more deeply than anything else. Allowing himself to return to that little village on the way to Saint-Lo.

 

_July 1944_

“Can we go around?” Ned asked wearily, already knowing the answer.

“No sir, Captain. There’s a million hedgerows and it seems like a million Krauts behind each one.”

Ned sighed. “I dare say a million is a bit of an overstatement, Mark.”

Mark Ryswell grinned. “Well, there’s enough of them to shoot most of us if we try to go the whole way through the hedgerows instead of through this little burg here, Lou.” He grinned again. “I mean, Cap.”

Ned half smiled back at him. He wasn’t used to his new rank, either. He’d earned it on Omaha Beach, when all hell was breaking loose, their captain lay in the sand with half his face blown off, and the Germans had everybody pinned down on that bloody beach. He’d gathered a group of six men and led them around to come at a German installment from the side, facing heavy fire, but succeeding in taking out that bunker. The cost had been heavy. Ethan Glover, Theo Wull, and Willam Dustin had all fallen in the effort, and Ned felt each of their deaths as his own responsibility. They had been his men.

That had been a month ago, and sometimes Ned wasn’t sure he even remembered the idealistic twenty-two year old who’d stepped off that landing craft into hell. Whatever he’d thought war was, he’d never imagined that. He still didn’t know how he’d done what he did that day. And he still felt he should have done it without getting three good men killed.

Of course, he’d gotten more men killed since then. The elation of securing the landing sites and getting men and equipment off the beach had been short lived. They’d had to move inland almost immediately, and virtually every mile had been fought for. The countryside was latticed with hedgerows and as Mark had just so astutely pointed out, any hedgerow could hide any number of Germans.

Their objective now was Saint-Lo, a town strategically located for securing northern France and expelling the Germans from the area. The 29th Infantry had marched to within two miles of the town by June 18, but had been halted there by the swampy hedgerow-encased landscape and by the need for more troops at Cherbourg and throughout the Cotentin Peninsula. Ned’s company had been part of those troops in the Cotentin, but now they were advancing toward Saint-Lo to assist the 29th.

It had been a bloody advance, and he’d stopped keeping a running list of the names of all the men killed. It was hard enough to keep track of the numbers. He’d tossed grenades into windows, ordered snipers to shoot men across fields, and generally been personally responsible for any number of German deaths. A number of French deaths as well, if he were honest with himself. When people were shooting at you, you didn’t always take time to separate soldier from civilian before shooting back. Sometimes you couldn’t separate them even when you tried.

No, he was still twenty-two, but he was a hundred years older than the man who’d stepped onto that beach thirty days ago.

He looked through the binoculars. It wasn’t even a proper village ahead. Just a small collection of houses, mostly little ones, and a couple barns. It was close enough to Saint-Lo to make a good base to work from, though, as they coordinated with other troops, and as Mark had said, going around it would be difficult. The difficulty in approaching it was the one large house that sat between them and the smaller ones. It was full of German soldiers who’d shot at the scouts Ned had sent earlier, killing one and wounding two. Whether or not any Frenchmen were in there is a question Ned would dearly like to have known the answer to.

He supposed that in the final analysis it didn’t matter. He had to get into and through this little hamlet, and to do that, he’d have to take out that house, whoever was inside.

“They promised me a tank. Any word on it?”

“Yep. Should be here by this evening. Howland and Martyn went back with some guys to escort it this way.”

Ned nodded. Along with Mark, Howland Reed and Martyn Cassel were the remaining members of his original group from the beach. “We’ll wait here then.”

“Oh, one other thing, Cap,” Mark said, and Ned waited to hear what he had to say. “Fellas from the 29th say there’s a girl in one of them houses works for the resistance. Real looker. Gets the Kraut officers to spill secrets right out of their dicks if you know what I mean.”

Ned knew what he meant.

“So, if we can find her, she might be able to tell us some useful stuff,” Mark went on.

“Do we have a name for the lady, Mark?”

“Um, starts with an A, I think. Weird name. Not the usual French kind of name.”

Ned laughed. “Well if you run into any beautiful women with non-French names starting with A, be certain to ask them if they have any experience in espionage.”

The tank arrived before sunset and Ned ordered it brought forward to the big house. It paused there, giving those inside a chance to come out and surrender. Instead someone shot at it. The man’s rifle did nothing against the tank’s thick armor, but Ned couldn’t take a chance on someone having more incendiary weapons in there. He ordered the tank to shoot.

The first blast tore a large hole in the wall. Still, as the infantrymen advanced on the house after the shot, men inside began firing upon them. The tank roared again, and this time an entire section of the roof and second floor came down. Three German soldiers fell to the ground below, but gunfire still came from within the devastated house. With the tank’s third shot, the house seemed to give a shudder and simply fall in upon itself. As the dust cloud rose from the rubble, Ned wondered if it had been previously damaged by shelling. Planes flew frequently overhead, bombing targets in Saint-Lo.

No one emerged from the rubble. Ned waited until the dust cleared somewhat and then ordered his men to begin searching the debris. He saw that people had begun to emerge from the smaller houses with their hands in the air. These were no soldiers. They were largely women, children, and old men. French civilians caught in hell.

Ned made his way forward past the smoking rubble into the little circle of houses, holding out his own empty hands in a sign of non-aggression. “I am Captain Eddard Stark of the First Infantry Division, First American Army. We’ve come to liberate you,” he called out in his dreadful French. This was one of the few phrases he’d been taught.

His announcement was met by silence and dull stares from the people gathering around.

“There were children in that house, Captain Eddard Stark. My brother and one other boy the Germans took to do errands for them. Have they been liberated?” The speaker was a woman near the back of the crowd. Her English was heavily accented, but far better than Ned’s French, and he did not miss her bitter emphasis on the word ‘liberated’. When she stepped forward, he saw that she had very dark hair and striking eyes that he could have sworn were purple.

“I . . .I am sorry, mademoiselle,” he said, feeling sick to his stomach. “I fear there is little chance that anyone in that house survived.” _Children? Have I now become a child killer as well?_

She walked forward to him, looking at him coolly, and then sweeping her eyes over the ruins of the house. “No. I doubt that they did. Would your men look for our boys, though?”

“Of course, Mademoiselle . . .?”

“Dayne,” she said. “Ashara Dayne.”

“If the boys are there, we will find them, Miss Dayne, and return them to you,” Ned said stiffly. “I am deeply sorry if we have caused them harm. We must remove all German threats between here and Saint-Lo.”

Her expression was all but unreadable, and odd mixture of amusement and contempt, but Ned could see a deep sadness in her eyes all the same. “Remove all the threats. Indeed.” She turned then, to put her arm around a little girl. She led the child back into one of the little houses, softly speaking to her in French.

The boys’ bodies were found in the rubble an hour later. They looked to be somewhere between ten and twelve. Ned thought about fourteen year old Benjen and had to walk away and vomit. _I killed them,_ he thought.

As he stood there, trying to catch his breath, contemplating what he might say to the one boy’s sister, Martyn Cassel came running up to him. “Hey, Cap! What do you make of this?” He held up something shiny and metallic.

“It’s a sword,” Ned said simply.

“But it’s too small, isn’t it?” Martyn asked.

Ned took it from him. The handle was made for a small hand, and the blade was thick and blunted. “It’s a toy,” he said softly. “A toy sword. Ben had something similar when he was little.” He looked up at Martyn. “My brother,” he added, seeing the confusion on the man’s face.

“You think it belonged to one of those boys?” Martyn asked.

Ned shrugged. “I’ll take it to the sister. Ashara, her name was?” As he said it, Ned realized that it likely started with A, and it certainly didn’t sound French.

When he walked back down to the house he had seen the woman enter with the little girl, Ned saw that someone had already brought the bodies of the two boys there, wrapped in army blankets. A woman had thrown herself over one of them, sobbing loudly. Ashara Dayne sat beside the other, gently touching the dead child’s hair, grief etched on her lovely features.

“Miss Dayne,” he said softly as he approached. He held out the toy sword, and her eyes filled with tears, and she whispered something in French.

“Where did you get that?” she asked him, reaching out for it.

“It was found near the boys. Is it . . .”

“It is Arthur’s,” she said softly. “How or why he had it in that house, I do not know.” She touched the dead boy’s hair again. “What did you think you would do, my sweet?” She switched into French and continued speaking to the dead boy, tears running down her cheeks.

“Thank you for bringing me this,” she said to Ned after a moment.

He couldn’t imagine she wished to speak to him further, and he knew he had no right to ask, but he asked anyway. “What did you call it? The sword? You said something when you first saw it.”

She actually smiled. “Pont du jour” she said. “Dawn.” She sighed then. “Arthur was a fanciful boy. He was given this when he was seven, just before the Germans came. They have been here since 1940, you know. He watched them kill our father simply because a German soldier was killed by La Resistance. Papa had nothing to do with it. Later, he watched them kill Jean, my fiance, after he was discovered destroying railroad tracks. Arthur was only nine when Papa was killed, ten when they killed my Jean. He’d read books of knights and dragons. He called himself the Sword of the Morning and swore he would kill all the Germans one day.” She looked at Ned sadly. “It would seem your iron dragon was too much for my little knight.”

Ned felt his heart drop to his feet. He thought of Lya and Ben. He thought of the baby Catelyn carried. “If I could change what happened . . .” he said, his voice actually breaking.

“You cannot,” she said simply, her face again a mask, betraying little of what she thought or felt. “The Germans came here and took what was ours, and killed us, and they stayed. Now you come and destroy what is ours and kill us, but you say it is only to rid us of the Germans. And that you will not stay. If you will go and give us back what is left of our country, I cannot hate you, Captain Stark. But you killed my brother. Do not expect me to love you, either.”

She bent and picked up the body of her brother. Ned felt he should offer his assistance, but doubted she would accept his help. He watched her walk away and then turned to go back to his men.

Over the next couple days, they set up camp in and around the little village while they awaited orders from the 29th, who coordinated the assault on Saint-Lo. It appeared no one except Ashara spoke English, so Ned found himself speaking to her frequently. He didn’t wish to put all the civilians out of their homes, but needed at least one house to make a headquarters. She helped him select one which belonged to an old woman who could easily move in with her daughter’s family for the present. He asked her what the soldiers could do to help the people while they awaited word from the 29th, and she looked at him strangely.

He smiled at her. “They aren’t always soldiers. Some are farmers or builders or mechanics back home. I don’t see very many men in this village, Miss Dayne. Let my men help your people while we are here.”

“Do you wish to be viewed as a hero, Captain Stark?” she asked him, and he once again had difficulty discerning whether she regarded him with amusement or contempt.

“No,” he said firmly. “I am a soldier. There is nothing heroic about killing people before they can kill you. It is merely what a soldier must do. But we are not the Germans, Miss Dayne. We really are here to help you.”

“So you are the ‘good guys’. I believe that is the term you Americans use, is it not?” Her expression did not change, and she did not take her eyes from his.

“I am trying to be,” he said simply. _But I ordered the death of your brother._

She continued to look directly at him, a characteristic which reminded him of Catelyn. His wife always met his gaze when she asked him a question or told him something he might not want to hear. Yet, where Catelyn’s expressive face hid nothing from him, this French woman’s face revealed almost nothing, and Ned found himself wondering how long she’d worked at perfecting her mask. Her voice softened somewhat when she next spoke, however, and Ned thought he almost heard sympathy in it. “I wish you luck, Captain Stark,” she said. “But I fear you may find that you cannot do what is required to drive out the Germans and still consider yourself a good man.”

Before he could formulate a response to this, she shrugged slightly. “I will tell the others that your offer of help is made in good faith.” She then left his new headquarters without another word.

People did start coming with requests for aid, and Ned did his best to provide assistance. He told himself he did this simply because it was the right thing to do, but he knew it was at least in part to atone for the two boys. He also knew, however, that nothing could pay that debt.

Ashara knew a great deal about the surrounding countryside, and she gave him information on movements of German soldiers in the area. He didn’t ask her how she got the information. She obviously worked with La Resistance, and if she wished to share information about that with him, she would. She asked once how long he and his men would be staying there.

“I suppose until we can liberate Saint-Lo,” he said.

She’d laughed out loud at that, but as usual, her laughter had a bitter edge. “I believe you use the wrong English word, Captain Stark. You will obliterate Saint-Lo before you liberate it, I think.”

He’d protested, and she’d laughed again, even more bitterly. “You see and hear the planes. Where do you think they go? What do you think they do?”

“The bombing is necessary,” he said. “We have to weaken the German defenses.”

She looked at him steadily with those striking violet eyes. “I do not say it is not necessary. That is not for me to decide. I simply say that when you march into Saint-Lo, it may well be that nothing remains of it.”

“It should be soon,” he assured her. “We’ve had Cherbourg since the end of June so more troops can land and . . .”

“You have Cherbourg, but the port is not usable,” she interrupted him.

He looked at her quizzically.

She sighed, and said something in remarkably recognizable German, although he didn’t know the meaning of the words. “I speak fluent German as well as English,” she said, but I have been careful to never let the Germans know this. I hear things. They damaged the port at Cherbourg badly before they gave it up. They mined it as well. It will take time before that port is useful to you.”

He began to write down all the little bits of intelligence she gave him, as he never knew when it might be useful. They were encamped at the village for over a week before a liason from the 29th met up with them. Ned had begun to feel almost guilty simply for sleeping in an actual bed under a real roof. The bed hadn’t kept him from dreaming, though. Occasionally, he dreamed of Catelyn, and those dreams were sweet, although they made waking to her absence all the more difficult. More often, he dreamed of Omaha Beach or the hedgerows, or of tanks firing upon his house and the walls crashing down on Lyanna, Benjen, and Cat who tried to shield a baby in her arms. Those dreams left him shaking and sweating.

The captain from the 29th appeared to know Ashara. She greeted him by name, but there was no warmth in her tone. When Ned observed the way he looked at her, he didn’t blame her. She came into the house with them to tell the man some of the things she’d already told Ned and then excused herself.

“I see you met our little secret weapon,” the captain said to Ned once she’d gone. “She trades that hot little ass of hers for German secrets. I’ve heard she sucks the information right out of the Krauts’ cocks.” He laughed heartily at his own joke, but then caught sight of Ned’s icy expression, and his laughter died.

“I would ask that you speak of the young lady with respect, Captain,” Ned said coldly. “If she is doing us a service, we owe her gratitude, not ridicule.”

“Whatever you say, Captain,” the man said with exaggerated courtesy. He then laid out Ned’s orders from his commanding officer. He was to move his men out toward Saint-Lo the next day. The 29th and other units had been involved in heavy hedgerow fighting along an almost 10 mile front approaching the city for the past several days. Casualties were heavy and reinforcements were needed.

On July 13, Ned marched his men to join the battalions at the front. The troops at their assigned position had managed to advance only a hundred yards the entire day before against fierce German resistance. On the 14th, it rained steadily, and the men lay in the mud behind their hedgerows returning sporadic German fire, but neither side made any progress. Fierce fighting resumed the next day, and one hour bled into another as men jumped hedgerows and charged forward again and again, either to be cut down by machine gun fire or to make it to the next hedgerow, hurling themselves down behind it to breathe for a moment before making the next potentially deadly jump. Ned watched men cut down all around him. The wounded, they did their best to drag to a point of relative safety. The dead, they simply left where they lay. Fighting ceased when dark fell, but the moans of the injured and dying never ceased. They used the cover of darkness to try to evacuate the wounded to the rear.

Ned, himself, had been hit by shrapnel in the left shoulder, but he’d refused evacuation, simply having the field medic pull the pieces out and bandage him up. He refused morphine as well. He needed to keep a clear head, and the wound wasn’t serious. He still had his three most trusted men about him, Mark, Martyn, and Howland. On the morning of June 16, the commanding officers gave the signal to continue the advance, and the hellish fighting began again.

Only a couple hours into it, Ned saw the tank approaching. Only this time, the tank was not his to command. Not his to set upon the guilty and innocent indiscriminately, to fire upon soldier and child without distinction. No, this time the big barrel of the gun was pointed at him. At his men. “Down!” he shouted, throwing himself to the ground just as fire erupted from the end of that barrel. The sound was deafening, and half the hedgerow to the front and right of him disappeared. He felt himself pelted by dirt and rock and fragments of God knew what. When he could see through the dust, he saw bodies and parts of bodies strewn over the ground to his right. He swallowed bile. “Forward and stay down!” he shouted, crawling on his belly with his gun held before him.

He and his three companions made the next hedgerow, but he knew it was poor defense if that tank’s gun pointed this way. “Do we have anything that can take that out?” he shouted to the men.

“We’ve all got grenades. They could do some damage if we got close enough, maybe,” Martyn answered.

Howland was looking around at the dead and dying. After a few seconds, he pointed. “M9,” he said, pointing at a bazooka lying next to one corpse. “That’ll slow it down for sure if I can get close enough before I fire it.”

“Can you shoot it?” Ned asked him.

The smallest man of their group nodded grimly.

“Then let’s go get it for him, boys. Howland, you stay here. You‘re the only one with much experience firing that thing. I can‘t have you getting shot.”

Ned, Mark, and Martyn started making their way toward the dead man and his anti-tank gun just as the tank belched fire again sending them all flat against the ground. That shot landed even further to their right, so they quickly started moving again. The German infantrymen had noticed their movement and now machine gun fire strafed the ground around them. Mark Ryswell screamed and grabbed his leg.

“Mark!” Ned shouted.

“Go on! I’m okay, but I can’t keep up. Go on!”

Howland was now spraying machine gun fire at the German shooters in an attempt to provide cover, and other men ran, crawled and fired weapons in all directions as well. Ned and Martyn made it to the gun.

“Ammo?” Martyn asked.

“Loaded,” Ned said, “But get his belt so we’ve got more.”

“Aye, aye, Cap,” Martyn said, his voice far more cheerful than the occasion warranted.

He had a difficult time getting the ammo belt off the dead man and stood to get better leverage. Just as Ned yelled at him to get down, a spray of machine gun fire cut him nearly in two not three feet from where Ned crouched. “No!” he screamed.

He started to grab for Martyn, but the man’s eyes stared sightlessly now, and so he grabbed the belt that Martyn had just managed to free instead. He looped it over his shoulder and began dragging the gun back to where Howland waited, stopping where Mark Ryswell lay on the ground.

“Come on,” he said to him. “I’ll help you back.” When he went to turn him over, however, his face was gone, and half his arm had been blown off. He’d been hit by a grenade as he lay there with his injured leg. Ned felt violently sick as he looked at the grisly skull with tatters of flesh where his friend’s face had been, but he forced himself to swallow and keep moving. Somehow, he got the gun back to Howland.

“Give me your grenades,” he said to him. “I’ll go just over there and start throwing at the thing. Keep its attention off you.”

Howland nodded without a word, all efficiency as he got the weapon set up to fire. Out of the corner of his eye, Ned saw another man just down the hedgerow who also had an M9. Maybe they really could knock this thing out. He moved off toward the right again and positioned himself to throw at the tank. It had moved closer. He might even hit it. At any rate, he’d do some damage to the German machine gunners. He pulled the pin on his first grenade and hurled it toward the big armored vehicle.

He never saw the German who had thrown the grenade which landed somewhere behind him. He felt, rather than heard the explosion. Then he heard nothing.

He woke up two days later. His head was bandaged and he couldn’t hear very well out of his left ear. The left shoulder was more heavily bandaged than before with his arm actually wrapped against his chest. He thought there were bandages around his midsection as well.

Blinking and looking around him, he saw that he was on one cot in a row of many in some sort of stone walled room that seemed to be missing a wall at one end. He grabbed at a man walking past even though the movement caused a blinding pain in his head. The man startled and looked down at him. Then he called to someone over his shoulder.

“Hey! Captain Stark’s awake!”

“Where . . .where am I?” Ned asked him, his voice sounding like his mouth was full of sawdust.

“Saint-Lo,” the man said.

_Saint-Lo. We made it._ “The tank . . .” he said in confusion. “Did we . . .?”

The man laughed. “That was two days ago, Captain. Your man and two other guys managed to take out. Your guy told us how you got that gun to him. Ballsy move, sir.”

“Howland. He’s all right then?”

The man’s expression darkened. “Corporal Reed’s alive, sir. He’s already been moved back behind the lines.”

“What is it? What happened to him?”

“I’m afraid he lost his leg, sir. Same grenade that nearly did for you, to hear the boys that was there tell it. The corporal tied a belt around his thigh and still managed to get his shot off at that tank before he passed out. He’s something.”

“He is,” Ned said quietly. _Crippled. And Mark and Martyn dead._ He remembered that. He closed his eyes and wondered why he was still here.

A doctor came and examined him after that, answering some of his questions. Saint-Lo had been officially taken earlier today, but there were still a few pockets of fighting in the city. Troops were going street by street in search of German soldiers, although apparently the streets weren’t always easy to identify because the entire place had been reduced to little more than rubble. This building was more intact than most, even with its missing wall, and therefore was serving as an infirmary of sorts. The wounded were sent further behind the lines as soon as it was feasible to move them.

Ned was pronounced well enough to be moved two days later, and while he awaited transport, he convinced the orderly attending him to let him walk outside for a bit. His head swam, and everything on him hurt with the effort of standing, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He wandered outside and almost fainted from shock at the devastation that met his eyes. _This was a city? This is a wasteland._

Only when the truck arrived to take him away did it occur to ask where he was going, and he was somewhat surprised to learn that he was being taken to a field hospital set up in the same little village he and his men had taken before marching to Saint-Lo.

Upon arriving there, Ned saw that the population of the place seemed to have tripled with large army tents almost as plentiful as the little houses. He was taken to one of these and assigned a cot, but no one said he had to stay there, so he began to wander around. The mood was rather celebratory in spite of the high numbers of casualties. Having finally succeeded in taking the damn town, the men seemed determined to revel in their victory whatever the cost had been. Most of the able bodied men who weren’t on duty and nearly all of the less seriously injured seemed to have found their way to alcoholic beverages of some sort. Their laughter mingled with the higher pitched laughter of women, and Ned realized there were far more French girls here than had been before. He wondered if they’d come from Saint-Lo.

He wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anything. He did accept a drink that a man offered him, though, and then a second. Then, when a young soldier and a very young looking giggling blonde who assured Ned she was eighteen (“Oui, Captain! Dix-huit ans!”) abandoned a full bottle of wine to disappear into the fields as the sun began to set, he simply grabbed the bottle and wandered off himself to be alone.

As he approached the smaller of the two barns back behind the houses, he heard the sharp sound of a slap and a string of French curses in a feminine voice.

“What’s the matter?” came a drunken male voice. “You only suck Kraut dicks? Come on, baby! I’ll show you what freedom feels like.”

Ned saw Ashara Dayne emerge from the barn followed by a GI who grabbed at her arm with one hand and his fly with the other. “Come on, baby,” he slurred.

“Let her go,” Ned said firmly, rather impressed with himself that he wasn’t slurring his own words. His wine bottle was more than half empty now.

The man grinned at him. “Aw, come on, man. I’ll share. I hear this one’s fucked half the German army already.”

Ned’s fist broke the man’s nose before he realized he intended to throw the punch.

“Fuck!” the soldier shouted, holding his hand over his profusely bleeding nose. “You’re crazy, man! Fuck you!” He staggered away, though.

Ashara looked at him for a moment. “So Saint-Lo is liberated, Captain Stark.” She didn’t phrase it like a question.

He took another big drink straight from the bottle. “No,” he said, walking away from her into the barn. “Obliterated.”

She followed him in and watched him as he stumbled and nearly fell walking over the uneven earth floor. The mixture of amusement and contempt in her gaze made him angry. “If you keep following men into this barn, one of them is going to hurt you,” he said, sitting down on a bale of hay against the barn wall.

“You think I followed him in here?” she asked him, her voice revealing more bitterness than usual. “I suppose you would. I am, after all, a whore.”

“You are not!” Hearing her call herself that made him angry, too. Mark and Martyn dying made him angry. Howland getting his leg blown off made him angry. The ruin they insisted on calling the city of Saint-Lo made him angry. Dead children, dead brothers, dead fathers, Cat on the other side of an ocean when he needed to hold her so badly . . .everything made him angry. But nothing made him angrier than being alive and unable to do any good for anyone.

She laughed at his protest. “But it’s true, Captain Stark. I have opened my legs for German soldiers. And I’ve opened the throats of German soldiers as well. Whichever is needed.” She laughed again at the look of shock on his face. “You think only men can kill, Captain?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I think anyone can kill.” He held up his nearly empty bottle in a mock toast. “Look at me! I joined the goddamn army to fight the Nazis, to honor my brother who was killed at Pearl Harbor, to make my dead father proud. I wanted to stop the evil and keep it away from my wife, my little sister and brother. . .my baby.”

She simply stared at him, expression as unreadable as ever, but she no longer laughed. “I have a wife, you know. A beautiful wife,” he told her. “She’s having a baby. My baby. And while she does that . . .I kill people. I kill lots of people. And I get people killed, too. People I’m supposed to take care of. I get ’em shot and blown up and burned to death. I kill kids, too. I’m a child killer.” He caught her eyes. “But you know that, don’t you. So tell me, Mademoiselle Dayne, how do I go home and hold my baby? What kind of fucking father can I be?”

He drained the last of the wine from the bottle and dropped it to the ground. Then his cheek stung suddenly, and he almost felt sober at the realization she had slapped him.

“You selfish, stupid man,” she said to him. _Her eyes really are purple,_ he thought. There was very little light in the barn as the sun had sunk below the horizon leaving only a pink glow, but he could see that those eyes were angry. “You have lost people? You have done bad things? Shall I cry for you?” She was standing over him, and she emitted a wordless howl, shoving him in the chest and nearly knocking him from the hay bale. “My father and brother are dead, too! And I have done worse things than you know. You think you have suffered here? You have been here little more than a month. The Germans came more than four years ago, Captain Stark! Four years, this has been my life! You miss your wife? Tell me, how sweet will it be when you see her again? I will never see my Jean! They killed him before my eyes! I watched him die, Captain, and you want me to care about your little troubles."

She turned and walked away from him then, and suddenly Ned felt ashamed. He stood, feeling a little unsteady. “I . .I am sorry, Miss Dayne. I didn’t know.”

She turned back toward him. “No. You don’t know anything.”

He took a couple steps toward her. “Is there something I can do? How can I . . .?”

“You can’t do anything!” she shouted again. “Haven’t you learned that yet? Why do you continue to try to fix everything? You cannot fix me. You cannot bring my brother back by making your soldiers clear my fields, and you cannot bring Jean back to me with your pity.” She stepped right up to him then, her angry eyes looking up into his, mere inches from his face. “I spit on your pity. I have no need of it.” Her voice broke ever so slightly. “I have no use for good men.”

He swallowed hard, angry at himself, angry at the Germans, angry at the senseless waste of it all. She was right. Nothing could ever fix any of this. The longer the war went on, the more the world would be broken, and he couldn’t change that. Just as the overwhelming futility of that realization began to sink into his wine soaked brain, she kissed him.

This wasn’t like any kiss he’d ever shared with Catelyn. There was no affection, no tenderness, no heated desire for each other. This was anger--a lashing out at all the hurts. And need--a need to feel anything other than empty. He recognized that anger and need because he felt it as well. He didn’t even realize he was kissing her in return until her back was against the wall and he was pressed against her. Her hands were at his fly, and he only became aware that he was stiff when her hand closed around his cock. Then he was pushing up her skirt and pushing into her, aware of nothing but emptiness and need, and finally release.

He was panting, the palms of his hands pressed against the barn wall on either side of her when he suddenly looked at her face and realized the enormity of what he had done. “Oh god,” he breathed, pushing himself away from her and staggering across the barn, pulling his pants up as he went. He thought he might be sick. His head was spinning, but it wasn’t the wine. He felt alarmingly sober now. “God damn me to hell,” he whispered hoarsely.

_Catelyn. Oh god! How can I even think of her now?_

“Captain Stark?” the French woman asked softly.

He turned, hoping wildly that whatever he saw would show him that this had simply been a dream, an hallucination produced by the bottle. Yet, Ashara Dayne’s hair was in wild disarray, and she was smoothing the skirt of her dress back down in the front. “Captain Stark, are you all right?”

“No,” he said. He sank desolately back down onto the hay bale he had been seated on before. “I . . .I am sorry Miss Dayne.”

“For what? You did nothing I did not wish you to do.” She shrugged. “A moment of comfort may be all we can offer each other, but I do not regret it.”

“Do not regret it?” He looked at her incredulously. _Comfort?_ He wasn’t sure what he would call what had just happened between them, but it sure as hell hadn’t brought him comfort.

She continued to regard him with a puzzled look, and he had difficulty meeting her eyes, turning his own downward.

“What is ‘cat’?” she said after a moment, and his eyes flew back to hers in shock.

“Oh, I know what the English word means,” she said, mistaking the expression on his face. “But why would you speak of a cat?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, once again feeling very ill.

“You said ‘cat’ when you. . .” she raised her eyebrow and gave an expressive shrug that he could understand all too well. “I only wondered why.”

He jumped to his feet again and walked across the barn. “God!” he shouted. Then “Damn! Damn! Damn!” striking the wall with his fist with each expletive.

She came and put a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped away from her as if her touch burned him. When he looked at her, he could see he had alarmed her. She did not deserve that.

“Cat . . .Catelyn . . .is my wife,” he said with a sigh. _How dare you, Ned? How dare you speak her name here? While you . . ._  He felt bitter tears sting at his eyes and he tried to blink them away.

“Oh,” Ashara said softly. “I see.” She looked at him with sorrow in those purple eyes. “You love her very much, don’t you?”

It seemed wrong to speak of Catelyn with this woman, but he found himself nodding. “She is everything,” he said simply.

Ashara nodded as well. “Ah. I am sorry for the pain I’ve caused you, Captain Stark.”

He looked at her disbelievingly. “You are sorry? I killed your brother.”

She shook her head. “A tank killed my brother. The war killed my brother. You had no more choice in your part than I have had in mine. Do not let your ghosts destroy you, Captain Stark. Eddard.” She said his given name softly, and it sounded odd in her accent. He hadn’t realized she even remembered it.

She started to reach out to him again, but saw him flinch away and dropped her hand. “I no longer have anyone who is everything,” she said. “I barely remember how I felt with Jean, for he is a ghost to me now, and I cannot let myself dwell with my ghosts. I have to keep my mind on the living, even if my heart is dead. You have your ghosts, too, I know. But your heart is not dead yet.” She smiled at him, albeit sadly. “Go home to your Cat, Eddard Stark. Give her your heart and let her hold it. I am simply one more ghost now. Ghosts cannot touch you if you do not allow it.”

 

_October, 1947_

_Ghosts cannot touch you._

“You were wrong about that, Ashara,” Ned whispered, picking up the photograph again and staring at the little boy who appeared to be several months younger than Robb, the little boy who stared at whoever had taken the picture with a long serious face and Ned’s eyes.

Ned closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He’d meant to tell Catelyn about that evening in France. He’d had months to try to figure out what to say. He’d left that little village less than a week after that to be shipped to a base in England to recover from his head injury and regain full use of his left arm. He’d never spoken to Ashara again. Back in England he’d found a stack of letters from Catelyn waiting for him, and he’d read every word with guilt stabbing at him like a dagger. He might have been sent home, but he didn’t think he could face her and had requested to be sent back to active duty as soon as he was able. He’d written her of his injuries, assuring her they were minor. He’d written that he loved her, and while the words were as true as ever, they’d felt like lies to him because of what he didn’t write. Because of what he had done. He’d rejoined the First Infantry in September and gotten back to the front in ample time to participate in the lengthy, miserable winter conflict that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. It was after that battle was finally over that Catelyn’s letter informing him he’d become a father in November found him. The elation of learning he had a son had been tempered by the guilt of having betrayed his son’s mother, and he told himself he would be completely honest with her as soon as he could speak to her face to face. He’d continued with his unit on through Germany to Czechoslovakia, fighting in numerous battles, and finishing the war in Europe with a promotion to major.

He’d come home to her just over a month after V-E day. His transport had actually gotten into port earlier than expected and he’d taken the first bus he could get home from the port to surprise her. She’d been on the front porch and had seen him walking up the road. She’d dropped a watering can she’d been using on the flowers and run to throw herself at him, her hair on fire in the June sunshine. They’d kissed on the sidewalk in a manner that would have no doubt scandalized the neighbors were they not willing to make allowances for returning war veterans. Finally, she’d grabbed him by the hand and led him to the house, making him wait on the porch while she ran inside to get Robb from Lyanna and carry him out to meet the father he’d never seen.

_The father he’d never seen._ Ned swallowed hard and looked again at the little photograph. _This child has never seen his father._ _My son. But not Catelyn’s son._

He’d meant to tell her what he’d done. But at first she’d been so happy to have him home, and he’d been so happy to be home with her, that he couldn’t bring himself to damage that joy. Later, as they both began to realize how damaged he was, he felt like he was putting her through quite enough with his nightmares and moody silences and occasional fits of irrational temper. She’d loved him through all of it and had healed him to the point that everyone else in their lives thought him remarkably unaffected by the horrors of war. Only she knew the ways in which he was changed forever, and she still loved him.

But there was one thing she didn’t know. As more time went by, it seemed to Ned that confessing his greatest sin would do nothing but cause her pain. The guilt of his act and the guilt of his silence weighed heavily on him, but did he have the right to steal her happiness just to soothe his own conscience? To ask her to help shoulder that weight? _One more ghost._ Why should he force Catelyn to be haunted by a ghost that couldn’t touch her?

“Damn it!” he swore, more loudly than he intended. “Why?” He looked at the boy in the photo, irrationally resenting him for existing, resenting his mother for not remaining a ghost. Wildly, he thought that the child might be anybody’s. She had called herself a whore, after all. But even from their brief acquaintance, Ned knew that wasn’t the case. She had done what she felt necessary in a time of war, but Ashara Dayne was no whore. She wasn’t a liar, either. In any case, Ned wasn’t blind. The boy in the photograph was a Stark.

“Jon.” He said it out loud for the first time, and it made him feel odd. He picked up the letter and read it again.

_Dear Captain Stark,_

_I learned you have a new rank when I inquired about how to find you. But to me, you will always be Captain Eddard Stark. I am sorry I have returned to haunt you after all. If you have looked at the photograph, you will already know why I write._

_I ask nothing from you. My son and I are well and we need nothing. For a long time, I thought I would not tell you. It would be easier for us both if I did not, I think. But he looks like you more and more, and I found I could not deny you at least the knowledge that he exists. That you have a son you have never seen._

_He is a good and clever boy. His name is Jon. I pronounce it in the French way, of course, and I named him for my Jean. It is spelled in the American way, though, because when he is old enough to ask about you, I will tell him his father was a brave American soldier and a good man. I will tell him no more unless you wish otherwise._

_We live in the same place still. There had been talk of abandoning Saint-Lo, as there is almost nothing that does not need to be rebuilt. I think that talk is foolish. Already, people have rebuilt their homes. So what if it is not the same? Nothing is ever the same, but our home is our home._

_If you wish to know your son, you know where to find us. I will not deny you. But if you ever try to take him from me, I will fight you. And you know far I will go in a fight._

_Now you know. I have no more to say._

_Ashara Dayne_

Now he knew, and there was unknowing it. He couldn’t ignore it, either. The little French boy he had never met was his own blood, and it wasn’t in him to deny or ignore that. He would write Ashara Dayne, and one day he would meet this son of his. He knew that. And he could never keep this from Catelyn. He knew that, too.

He knew he should go upstairs. Staying down in the kitchen and staring at the letter and picture until the sun came up would not change what had happened or what he must do. Sighing, he folded the little photograph into the letter, placed them both back into the envelope, and laid the envelope back on the counter. It didn’t occur to him to hide it away. Cat would never read it without asking. And he had to tell her about it anyway.

He climbed the stairs slowly, his own footsteps sounding too loud to him in the silent house. When he entered their bedroom, his breath caught at the sight of her. The curtains were open to let in the cool autumn breeze, and the full moon illuminated her sleeping figure, her face and shoulders pale and perfect, and the bright spill of her hair across the pillow appearing to glow with a light of its own. She was so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at her.

He walked to the bed and reached down to touch her hair. “God, I love you, Cat,” he whispered hoarsely.

Her lips curved into a smile, and he realized she was not as asleep as he’d thought. Her eyes opened and looked up at him. “I love you, too,” she said softly. That hurt him because he knew how much she meant it. There was no Brandon between them anymore, no uncertainty, no hesitation. They’d reached this place through years and tears, and now when he finally accepted the truth of her love for him, he might very well destroy it.

He realized that he was just standing there staring at her when she reached a hand up to him. “Come to bed.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he told her.

“I told you to,” she said with little smile. “Come to bed, my love.”

He sighed and began to remove his clothing. When he wore nothing but his boxers, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Cat . . .” he started, but then couldn’t find words to keep speaking.

She sat up then, and as the sheet fell away from her, he saw that she was naked beneath it. She moved behind him to put her arms around his waist and lay her head against his back. “You read your letter, didn’t you?” she said softly.

“Mmm,” he said, which wasn’t really a yes or no.

“Do you want to tell me?”

_No. But I have to. God help me, I have to._ He pulled away from her slightly, turning to face her. “Cat . . .I . .” _God, I can’t do this!_

She saw his distress and put a hand on his face. “Don’t. Don’t talk if it hurts you, Ned. I know how hard it is for you to speak of Saint-Lo.”

He literally jumped. “How? How do you . . .”

“Shh, my love,” she said soothingly, stroking his cheek. “I saw the envelope, remember? You told me what happened to that poor city, and to your men there. She put her arms around him and pulled him tightly against her. “And I nearly lost you there. If you wish to speak of it, I’ll listen, but I’m just as content to never hear another word about Saint-Lo. I have you here now. You are safe and you are here. Nothing else matters.”

“Oh god, Cat,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t know how . . .”

She silenced him then with a kiss, and he let her. He gave himself up to the taste of her lips and the scent of her hair and the feel of her breasts crushed against his bare chest. He knew every inch of her, he realized, and would recognize her by touch or taste or scent as easily as by sight. As he kissed his way down her neck to her breasts, it occurred to him that he could barely remember the face of the woman who had borne his other son, only her dark hair and her striking violet eyes. He’d never even seen her body, could not remember touching it in any meaningful way in spite of what he had done with her.

He moved his hands lower, over the firm mound of Catelyn’s belly where their new baby grew within her, and she lay back on the bed. He bent to kiss her belly then, putting his hand on the soft, wet flesh between her legs. She moaned softly, parting her legs for him, and he moved lower still, placing his mouth on her, teasing her with his tongue, causing her to cry out sharply and then turn her face into the pillow, fearful of waking Robb. He intended to make her come with his mouth, but he felt her tugging on him, pulling him up, and he looked up at her face.

Her face was was flushed with desire and her breaths were short ragged gasps. “Please,” she whispered. “I want you inside me.”

He realized then that he still wore his boxers and pulled them off as he moved himself to slide over her. His hard cock pressed against her rounded belly as he put his lips to hers again and even as the sensation thrilled him and caused him to grind against her reflexively, he worried he’d hurt her. “Is this okay?” he breathed.

She laughed. “Yes,” she said breathily. “I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to do it this way, though, so I want you on me and in me now.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. She arched toward him, and he pushed into her. Her belly pressed tightly between them did alter the angle of their joining, but did nothing to decrease the pleasure for either of them. With every thrust, he was aware only of her holding him, surrounding him, taking him into herself. When he felt her shiver and tighten around him, he captured her mouth with his, smothering the sounds she made with his lips. Then he allowed himself to follow her over the edge, holding himself up on his arms as his body jerked and he spilled himself inside her, and then rolling to his side immediately afterward lest he collapse onto her and squash their unborn child beneath him.

When they could both breathe normally again, she said, “I love you, Ned. Nothing else matters.”

She’d said that to him any number of times since his return from the war, using the words to banish his ghosts. She’d whispered them after making love to him like she had tonight, or after he’d awakened screaming from one of his nightmares, or even after he’d shouted at her in rage over things that had nothing to do with her. Those words had always reached him, however lost he was, and brought him comfort. Not tonight. Tonight, they only made him wonder if this was the last time he’d hear her say them.

They were lying face to face, arms around each other, foreheads almost touching. “I love you,” he told her. “Please don’t ever doubt that.”

She pressed a quick, soft kiss to his lips. “I don’t,” she said. “Can you sleep now, my love?”

“Yes,” he lied. “We should both sleep, Cat. I’ve kept you awake long enough.”

She grinned lazily, stretching like an actual cat. “Well, I enjoyed it thoroughly, Mr. Stark, so that’s all right.”

He smiled back at her to reassure her he was truly all right, and then she rolled over, settling herself back against him, her bottom resting against his now soft cock. He put his arm over her to put a hand on her belly and kissed the back of her neck. “Sleep, Cat. Morning will be here soon.”

“Mmm,” she said with a yawn. “You, too. Get some sleep, Ned.”

He knew he wouldn’t though. She drifted off to sleep quickly, and as she dozed, the baby inside began kicking at Ned’s palm as if awakened by their lovemaking. _Lovemaking,_ he thought. That’s what it always had been with Cat. Ever since the first time. Thinking about how they made Robb and this new child had once caused his heart to fill with more joy and love than he’d ever thought possible, but now it filled him with guilt as well. He’d never made love to anyone but Cat. That was as true now as it had ever been. What had happened between him and Ashara Dayne in that barn in France had nothing to do with love, but they had made a child nonetheless, a child he would not abandon, and he didn’t know if Catelyn could ever forgive him for that.

_I will tell her tomorrow,_ he told himself, holding her a little more tightly to him and rubbing the spot on her belly where their little one made his or her presence known with little thumps against his hand. _I will tell her all of it and ask her forgiveness._ For now, though, Ned wanted one more night. A few more hours. He wanted to savor these moments that he feared might be the last in which he could hold this woman he loved so completely and know that she loved him completely in return.

_Tomorrow,_ he promised himself, and Ned Stark kept his arm protectively over his wife, praying that he could somehow keep his ghosts from destroying her.


End file.
